Inside CAF 2025 Luxury Hi-Fi Show Part 2 — Capital Audiofest's Large Exhibit Rooms And Lobby Displays
Fresh trends, the hottest audio equipment, and rooms everyone's talking about.
Capital Audiofest 2025 Show Report By Rick Becker

Now Listen Here
The Executive Lounge is a fairly big room, a little larger than the rooms in the hallway I had just covered, though it was probably less than half the size of the Eisenhower room with the Audio Group Denmark rig I had just been in. It is long and narrow. Now Listen Here, the retailer up in Harrisburg, PA, who also had a smaller sleeping room (319) on this level, usually has a very fine system at CAF 2025. 

I was alerted by Andy Tebbe of Backert Labs that their new Optik Phono 1.1 tube phono stage ($11.5k), which is compatible with the DS Audio optical cartridges, would be used, and that a second arm on the turntable would have a mono cartridge. Oh, goodie! I dug out my vintage mono copy of Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home, which I've played a thousand times, trying to figure out the lyrics on the crap system I had cobbled together in college. For good measure, and possibly to avoid some embarrassment, I cleaned it off on my Nessie record cleaning machine.

The loudspeakers were the Acora Acoustics MRC-3 in an exotic Lilac Marble finish ($23,490) with internal lighting to make listening in the dark a special, intimate experience. The price in standard stone is $15,990, making this a very high-value speaker, and $19,490 in premium stone.

In many ways, this rig was an affordable version of the VAC / Acora Acoustics rig in the Potomac room, yet to come here on Enjoy the Music.com. The speakers were powered by VAC Signature 202 iQ Musicbloc amps (stereo/mono) used as monoblocks ($22k ea.). The preamp was a VAC Signature Mk IIa SE ($21k, $28.5k w/tube phono stage).

The turntable was fitted with a DS Audio W3 optical cartridge ($5.5k). An additional tonearm ($6.2k) was fitted with a W3 Mono cartridge, also $5.5k. The Backert Labs Optik Phono 1.1 tube phono stage ($11.5k) is about half the price of the DS Audio TB-100 tube phono equalizer. You would have to be quite a connoisseur and listen to these two back-to-back to appreciate any difference.

I listened to both a pristine cut from Dr. John's In a Sentimental Mood and the raunchy grooves of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from my vintage mono LP of Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home. It was no surprise that Dr. John sounded superb; I reviewed the Backert Labs Rhumba Extreme preamp and bought the review sample. I expected no less from this phono stage, and it delivered—in a big way. What astonished me was playing back the Dylan song with a mono cartridge.

Sure, there were still lots of ticks, but far fewer and less obnoxious than before, and every word was crystal clear. The only disappointment was that the system could not play back in true mono—the music was still coming to my two ears from speakers in two different locations in the room. Go ahead—call me a purist.

On the digital side of the rig were a Rockna Wavedream Reference Signature DAC ($26,900) and an Innuos ZENith Next-Gen music server ($21,700). An AudioQuest Niagara 7000 power conditioner ($12,500) cleaned up the AC, and a loom of moderately priced cables from AudioQuest strung it all together.

A couple of additional stone versions at the entrance to the room.

Entryway Displays Within The Lobby
Show hours were over, but music lingered in some of the rooms. I wandered around the lobby for a few minutes to photograph the many speakers that were on display there.

Volti Audio Loudspeakers
This speaker from Popori Acoustics reminded me of the sail of a catamaran, and it was more room-friendly than I thought it might be.

Fink Team From Blink High End
An Audia Flight amp, Viablue cables, and a Diptyque DP115 speaker from The Listening Room.

A Gershman Symphoria permitted better lighting to illustrate the copper inserts and the speaker binding posts.

Eastern Bay Sound put out their eye candy to lure people in to hear the Belleson phono stage.

The new Norwegian speaker company put out a version of the speaker I heard earlier. The black horn and large bass driver were much more attractive in this darker wood tone.

Evening LP Presentation
After dinner, I returned to the Potomac room in the hotel to attend an entertaining presentation of curated LPs that delighted a SRO crowd for well over an hour, probably two. Despite the excellent sound quality from the VAC / Acora Acoustics system, the presentation had to be curtailed when hotel guests in the rooms above us complained to the front desk. The show doesn't really close down completely at 6 p.m., but you have to know where to go after hours. And there were others.

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